Read Online The Hunting Trip by III William E. Butterworth - Free Book Online Page A

ain’t. Sorry.”
    â€œI understand,” Phil said.
    The waiter left only to return several minutes later with a teapot and cup.
    â€œDrink this, boy. It’ll make you feel better.”
    â€œThank you kindly, sir, but I don’t drink tea.”
    â€œThis is special tea. They make it in Dungaress, Scotland. I understand Her Majesty the Queen herself really likes to sip it. Try a little sip, why don’t you? See for yourself if you think it’s worth the ten dollars a cup market forces require me to charge for it.”
    â€”
    By the time the train reached Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station, Phil wasn’t feeling much of the pain he had been feeling since learning of Alexandra’s nuptials. Or much pain at all.
    When he entered his father’s apartment, his sire was there.
    â€œI would say ‘welcome home,’” his father greeted him, “except it’s Wednesday, and my own military experience has taught me that privates are rarely, if ever, given time off in the middle of the week. Which makes me suspect that you have experienced more of the rigors of military life than you like, and have, as we old soldiers say, ‘gone over the hill.’”
    P. Wallingford Williams, Jr., having taken ROTC at Harvard College, had entered military service as a second lieutenant of artillery and gone to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where in the sixth week of the Basic Artillery Officer’s Course he had dropped the trail of a 105mm howitzer on his left foot while attempting to set the cannon up forfiring. Army surgeons saved the foot, except for the big toe, the loss of which caused Lieutenant Williams to be medically retired from the service with a five percent disability pension. He later became quite active in several disabled veterans organizations.
    â€œActually, Pop, I’m on my way to Berlin.”
    â€œI have to tell you, son, that it won’t do you any good to go to New Hampshire. The military police will run you to earth no matter where you try to hide. My advice is that you go to Penn Station, or Grand Central, whichever you prefer, and surrender yourself to the military police who patrol there. Perhaps, considering your youth, the courts-martial will temper your sentence with compassion.”
    â€œI’m not AWOL, Pop. I’m en route to the Berlin in Germany.”
    â€œAnd why are you wearing corporal’s chevrons? In my day in uniform, impersonation of a noncommissioned officer was nearly as serious an offense as impersonating a commissioned officer. You’re never going to get out of Leavenworth.”
    â€œI’m wearing corporal’s chevrons, Pop, because I am a corporal. Here, have a look at my orders.”
    On doing so, Second Lieutenant P. Wallingford Williams, Jr., Artillery, Medically Retired, announced, “I can’t make heads or tails of that gibberish. Why don’t we start over?”
    â€œSir?”
    â€œHello, Philip. What brings you home, wearing corporal’s chevrons, in the middle of the week?”
    Phil told him.
    â€œObviously, I owe you my profound apologies,” his father said when he had finished. “I can only offer in extenuation that on the last seven occasions on which you appeared unexpectedly at my door in the middle of the week, it was because you had been booted from the finest boarding schools on the East Coast. And each time that happened, it cost me an arm and a leg—I shudder to remember whatit cost me to get you into Saint Malachi’s—to get you into another one.”
    â€œI understand, Pop. No apology is necessary.”
    â€œBut I must tell you, Philip, that even when I so unthinkingly thought, ‘My God! Now he’s Gone Over The Hill,’ I also thought,
Well, at least he
didn’t do to me what Hobo Crawley’s boy did to ol’ Hobo
.”
    â€œPop, are you talking about Hobart J. Crawley the Fourth?”
    â€œIndeed I am. The son of